often angry. always gen x.

palin’s e-mails? yours now for the low, low price of $15 million

Investigative reporter Bill Dedman over at MSNBC has just depressed me further with the following news. Read the whole article here, which answers most of the questions I’ve heard roiling around the issue of requests for Palin administration emails, and raises many more. For one: can’t you save a copy of your work for future requests? Are they seriously trying to suggest, in charging exorbitant fees for the exact same material, that they have to start all over again for each email request? I was going to say there oughtta be a law, but page two does cover the murky business of legality around the issue. Definitely not cut & dry stuff. And I certainly don’t understand why Branchflower wouldn’t have had full rights to force the issue for the Troopergate report. I’ve excerpted a longish bit here, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg of what Dedman’s findings cover, so please do hie thee over yon MSBNC way.

Sarah Palin’s office has discovered a renewable resource to bring millions of dollars into Alaska’s economy: the governor’s e-mails.

The office of the Republican vice-presidential nominee has quoted prices as high as $15 million for copies of state e-mails requested by news organizations and citizens. No matter what the price, most of the e-mails of Palin, her senior staff and other state employees won’t be made public until at least several weeks after the Nov. 4 presidential election, her office told msnbc.com on Thursday.

. . . Msnbc.com did receive from Palin’s office copies of all the public records requests filed since she was inaugurated, and the replies from the governor’s office. Palin took office in December 2006, after seeking office on a platform of clean and transparent government.

The price quotes reveal that Palin’s office has repeatedly tried to charge different news organizations the cost to reconstruct the same e-mail accounts of the governor, her senior staff and other employees. Each time an e-mail is requested, the office quotes the same cost of $960.31 for 13 hours to recover and search each employee’s e-mails.

NBC’s price quote for e-mails sent to Todd Palin: $15 million.

The AP’s price for e-mails between state employees and the campaign headquarters of Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain: $15 million.

And the AP again, for e-mails between state employees and the National Park Service (on polar bears, wolves and other topics): $15 million.

And then there’s the matter of those private email accounts, and the lawsuit brought (and won this week) to make them public:

. . . The courts have given the Palin administration a nudge toward open records. A state judge ruled this week that the state must retrieve public e-mails sent between state accounts and the private e-mail accounts used by the governor and other state employees.

Having a private e-mail account, by itself, is not unusual or unethical, because state employees are forbidden to carry out political activities on government accounts. That’s the reason given for Palin’s habit of punching away on two separate Blackberry devices. But a citizen request earlier this year yielded hundreds of heavily redacted e-mails from the governor’s office, which suggested that Palin and her staff had chosen to move most of their government conversations off the radar, to their Yahoo accounts.